Minus
by badriddance
Summary: When the worst happens on patrol. Written for a kinkmeme prompt. Involves character death.


Dan didn't move until the sun rose. He just sat there, holding the body. The blood around him, up and down his arms, splashed over his chest, trickling over his legs, pooling under them, had gone sticky and cold. His arms and legs were prickling from the weight and the fact he hadn't moved for nearly four hours. He was a mess, and he didn't care. It didn't matter if he was never clean again. How could he be? He had failed and would carry that stain forever.

They had both been shot. The impact of bullets against armor had sent him sprawling, white-hot pain fuelling the rage that had him up again. He had broken their arms, noses, and probably at least one of their necks. The idiots hadn't stopped shooting. It was like they hadn't realized that it wasn't working, like the guns made them all-powerful, like it didn't occur to them to save themselves until the guns clicked empty.

It wasn't until they were all down that Dan had realized that they had only been shooting at him as an after thought. Their actual target had been Rorschach. Dan had dragged him into Archie, and tried to patch him up while they flew to the hospital. It had been too late. Too many holes, not enough time, too much blood, too far to go for help, it came down to simple math and all added up to minus.

Rorschach had been moving, gasping, trying to talk to him, trying to tell him something. All of his precision and power was draining out of him. His hands clutched and clawed at Dan, movements blind and feeble and growing more so every second. It had finally sank in that he wasn't going to make it when Archie pinged the halfway there mark. Dan had stopped trying to hold the injuries closed. It was a lost battle and part of him already knew it. He gathered Rorschach up into his arms and his lap, leaning back against the side of the ship to hold his partner like a child.

A bloodied glove pressed against his chest with no strength and he caught it to hold it there before it fell. He rested his chin on Rorschach's forehead, feeling the weakening exhales against his throat.

"You did good," he said. "The worst is over. The hard part's over. This is as bad as it gets, and now there's nothing left to be afraid of. You'll be all right. I'll take care of you. I'll take care of everything. You did real good. Real good in the world. You did what the rest of us were just pretending to do. I should've- I always- I…"

Words faltered out and he heard his own name gasped, barely a breath against his skin. His arms tightened, as if he could hold the life in Rorschach's body for just a little while longer. He pressed his forehead to Rorschach's, feeling the burn of tears in eyes he didn't dare close. The hand under his tightened, then went limp. The last breath whispered out against his lips, cool against the tears, and was gone. Rorschach was gone.

The body he had never seen without some tension was slowly becoming a rag doll in his arms. Something hot and wet seeped through the layers of cloth over one of Dan's legs as all the muscles relaxed. Dan couldn't find it in him to care. This was as bad as it got. He didn't think he could care about something as trivial as hygiene ever again. And then it hit him that maybe that was what had happened to Rorschach years ago, when he stopped caring about how he smelled or what he ate. Whose body had _he_ held? Whose blood had soaked through _his_ costume? Is that what was going to happen to Dan?

Would he be the one haunting the dark now, fury and grief at his failure to save that one person twisting him into something even his friends were halfway afraid of? There was something grimly satisfying about that thought, about going back to finish the job, hanging the scum from the fire escapes as warnings to the rest of their murdering kind. He could find who had sold them those guns and burn them alive in their own crooked shops.

But. How could he even keep going on patrol, pretending to save anybody, when he hadn't saved his own partner? Could he stand to go it alone? Could he stand it if some punk, some night gloated about killing Rorschach? Would he able to stop the shame from destroying him? Would he be able to stop himself from tearing the tongue out of whatever punk tried?

It wasn't until the sun came up, peeking through the round windows that he knew what he could do. They were hovering over the hospital, had been for some time, but the play of light over the cheekbone of the mask made him move enough to touch it. The blots, frozen as still on Rorschach's face as Archie was in the air, swirled back to life under his fingers. The only life Rorschach had left would have to come from him, he realized, so he would have to guard it as carefully as Rorschach had.

No one would know. No one would ever know that he had been beaten, had fallen, had died like a mortal man. Dan would hide him as secretively as he had always hidden himself. The underworld would still be terrified of him. Dan would see to that. His mark would still be left on bodies of the punished. He would never be seen again, but that would only mean that no one would know when he would reappear again. In the meantime, no one would ever see him like this, empty and lifeless. Dan could clean the blood, seal the body away, leave nothing more than the rumor to haunt the underworld.

Even if one of the shooters survived to tell the tale, it would only become part of the legend. How many times had they shot him and still his mark was carved into their doors? He would be a real boogy man now, unstoppable, unkillable, invisible. He would live on that way until Dan ended up following him into the dark. That much he could do.


End file.
